Featured Applications

ZNasichDani / From Our Taxes

ZNasichDani.sk uncovers who are influential persons (owners, managers, statutories) standing behind companies successful in securing contracts with the state, thus helping uncover conflicts of interest; it also shows how large are the sums of contracts obtained in this way.

OpenCorporates

OpenCorporates has taken one of the most important global datasets -- companies, and government data relating to them -- and for the first time exposed it on the web in an open, easy to use, yet incredibly powerful form, massively increasing accessibility of this data, and allowing connections between companies to be crowdsourced.

Live London Underground tube map

It plots the current positions of all London Underground trains on a map, and updates the map in real time.

It provides a stunning visualisation of the sheer amount going on in the Underground network, the constant movement, and a great overview of one of the most famous transport networks in the world. It also provides great interest when compared to Harry Beck's iconic Tube Map, by showing the network's geographic nature.

It lets people understand something that is going on under their feet that they might have known was there, but not understand its complexity and activity. People can see if lines are closed or in difficulty.

Evolution of European Union legislation

Explaining the legislative activity of the European Union in time and within different policy areas.

It answers simple questions like: "how much EU law relates to energy policy?", "has the legislation been growing or shrinking (quantitatively) within a given time frame?"
, "are there more EU laws related to nuclear energy than to coal?" "how about oil and gas in 1974?", "how many EU laws are related to shipping compared to air transport?" "how many of these laws are directives/regulations/decisions?" etc.

All these questions are answered in a simple easy to understand way. Before the visualization and api.epdb.eu it has (as far as we know) not been possible to find an answer to these questions.

Featured Ideas

bePart - mobile eParticipation for urban development

bePart is a mobile application which facilitates citizens’ participation in urban development.

Who would benefit from it and how?

bePart lowers the threshold for political involvement, especially for young citizens. Our mobile app lets them access development plans of local and regional urban projects. Also, it provides a list of public hearing dates, further encouraging participation in those events.
Since all relevant data is widely scattered across the Internet, personal participation currently requires a lot of effort. Moreover, most citizens are not aware of their opportunity to participate in development planning. bePart aggregates all relevant data, such as project outlines, schedules, and visualizations, informing the user about how and when they can take action. A “Concerning Me” feature highlights regional development projects that are of possible relevance to the user.

What data do you think you need in order to build it?

bePart aggregates open infrastructure data and maps. This includes development plans, project blueprints, plan approval histories, prospective hearing dates, and so on. As an example, data for Berlin can be found using the “FIS-broker”. This source provides detailed geo-sensitive information about urban development, though it does not offer an open API yet. The development plans and meeting times need to be exposed in an open form in order for bePart to channel the data.
All European cities providing such data in an open and standardized way allow bePart to actively involve citizens in urban development.

If you have any supporting material (video clips, pictures, or other resources), please list details and links below.

Images showing the proposed application, an exemplary scenario and the concept paper (in German) can be found here

European Union Dashboard

A European Union Dashboard that provides:

3. How much did he/ she himself/ herself contributed to this policy wise

4. How much time was spent in the EU parliament policy wise

5. How much time was spent by MEPs of his country policy wise

6. How much did his/ her country received from EU policy wise

7. How much did he/ her received from EU policy wise

This can be made as a mobile phone application/ web site information.

Who would benefit from it and how?

European Citizens will be benefitted by the transparency thus provided – and how he/ she/ MEPs of this country/ his/ her country is contributing and what benefits are accruing.

What data do you think you need in order to build it?

1. EU policy wise distribution of budget/ expenditure is published by EU

2. Member States wise contribution and benefits are published by Eurostat

3. Data about the budget of member states will detail the percentage of tax money contributed by a member states to EU. This data can also come from GNI (Gross National Income) of the member state as the contribution to EU is a percentage of this amount.

This data can be distributed (computed) as per the policy wise distribution of EU expenditure.

4. If the user provides his/ her tax paid information/ or his annual income – then his tax liability and what percentage of this got contributed to EU can be computed

5. EU parliament provides the details about policy was questions asked by MEPs – this can be used to depict the time spent policy wise by EU

6. The MEPs of the user’s own country – depending upon how many questions they asked in the EU parliament (this data is provided by EU parliament) will depict – how much time was spent by their own country in these policies

7. The benefit received by the member countries is also provided by Eurostat - this data can depict how much of these benefits policy wise got received by his/ her country. If divided by the population figures of the member country – this will detail how much of this amount can be considered to have come back to him/ her

Nomen est omen

What do European public databases say about your family name?

Who would benefit from it and how?

Nomen Est Omen provides people with a fascinating overview of what public databases say about their family name (currently in Finland and the Netherlands). It offers a simple interface into registers which hold information about surnames and by linking to those sources, provides the users with the opportunity for further research about their family name.

The ""Elite-o-meter"" adds a tongue-in-cheek estimate of how elitist a family name is by counting, for instance, the number of Finnish MP's with the given surname in the past 100 years.

Alternatively, users can compare two family names against each other or make family name combinations and compare the collective results.

The app encourages users to learn more about their family's history and can be used by researchers, schools, genealogists and laymen alike.

The problem we have faced in many cases has been the material not being machine-readable or suitable for screenscraping. In particular we would like to see state-owned name databases being opened (as has been done by Population Register Centre in Finland).